In between
by purpleflames
Summary: A ghostly whisper in the middle of the night leads Oscar to realise that perhaps The Wicked Witch of the West isn't beyond saving yet, perhaps Theodora still resides behind those fiery eyes.
1. Chapter 1

**Summary: A ghostly whisper leads Oscar to realise that perhaps The Wicked Witch of the East isn't beyond saving yet, perhaps Theodora still resides behind those fiery eyes**.

_Disclaimer: I don't own anything. If I did then I wouldn't have felt the need to throw things at the screen when that horrible ending happened._

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_"Oz..."_

The ghostly whispers he heard in his dream had the Wizard of Oz tossing in his sleep. He turned to his side snuggling down into the pillow smiling incoherently when the whisper didn't repeat itself, not realising that it wasn't a dream to begin with.

_"Oz..."_

The sing song whispers started again and he pulled the pillow over his ears and went back to sleep.

_"Oscar?"_ The voice grew insistent and he groaned out loud whispering a 'shut up' and scrunching his eyes shut.

_"Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkel Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs!"_

He woke up then and looked around wildly only to find himself all alone in his room. So where was this strange whisper coming from? And why did this disambiguated voice know his full name? No one in the whole of Oz knew his name he'd even managed to completely forget it until now always thinking of himself as the Wizard of Oz ever since the battle. After all he'd never even said his name out loud after introducing himself to...

The Wizard of Oz blanched and sprung upright on his bed. The only person in Oz who knew his whole name was The Wicked Witch of the West. Or as he once knew her, Theodora. The pang of sheer guilt he always felt when he thought of that sweet girl rushed through him and he sat on the edge of his bed dropping his head into his hands. It wouldn't be the first night he'd stayed awake, tortured by the memories of the girl he could not save.

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending upon how you saw it, his introspection was interrupted as the ghostly whispers started once again.

_"Oscar... Oscar, please, listen to me. __**Find**__ me. Follow my voice."_

The voice called out to him and he answered striding across the room and heading out the door following it's whispers until he found himself standing in front of a door that hadn't been opened in months. The door that led to Evanora's room. It had remained untouched all these months no one quite brave enough to enter the room, not even Glinda was willing to enter it saying something about the darkness being too strong there.

He hesitated hand curling over the knob only to withdraw until only his fingertips were touching the metal.

_"Oscar..."_ The ghostly voice called out again and he steeled himself and turned the knob flinging the door open before he could change his mind. The gold and black trimmings of the room mocked him with their splendour. It looked like the room of any other of the ladies of the court, opulent and grand. There were no real signs that it was the room where she once practised her dark arts, no hint of the twisted nature that had remained hidden beneath the glossy veneer that was Evanor.

The only thing in the entire room that looked off were the deep gouges in the marble table and the golden tablecloth lying on the floor and scattered metal goblets that had run a bit too close to the fire and melted to the ground.

_"Oz..."_

The voice called out to him again, this time he knew it was coming from within this very room. It called him again and he found himself kneeling on the floor looking under the silver chaise lounge and found in the darkness there a single green apple. He pulled it out and turned it in his hands, frowning when he saw that someone had taken a bite out of it. A tiny little bite, dainty really.

He flipped it over and polished the skin with his sleeve not expecting it to glow. And then in the light it emanated a face slowly took shaped eyes, one green and one brown,a pixie nose and full ruby lips that he would remember anywhere.

"Theodora-" He whispered to an empty room lit up with the glow of an apple.

The visage in the fruit's skin smiled softly and he gasped as his grip on it tightened.

_"Long time no see, Oz."_

.

_._


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N:I still own nothing._

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"Theodora? How are you? But you're..."

"Evil?"

He tried to look for a better word.

"I'd like to think of it as misguided."

"Still feeling guilty, huh?"

"But you're here, and you're...you. Like the Theodora I knew before, only -"Again he struggled for words to put it.

"In an apple?"

"Well, yes." It came out as more of a question than an answer and the Theodora in the apple (how exactly did that happen anyway?!) laughed.

"It's a long story."

"I've got all night. There's no way I'm going to sleep after this."

"I'm not Theodora." She said and his arm sagged slightly as all the hope that had suddenly risen in him in the few minutes since he'd seen her drained out of him. "Well not exactly anyway."

"What do you mean not exactly?"

"When you met up with Glinda and went along with her, Evanora and I were watching from her crystal ball and-"

"Wait, crystal ball?"

"Yes Evanora's specialty was primarily in scrying spells, it's one of the reasons she was chosen to be the royal advisor, she could see what was going on in any part of the kingdom. It made ruling over the vast lads of Oz easy."

"Oh. So she'd been watching us all along right?"

"Since your balloon landed. May I continue?"

"Oh right, sorry." He said and tucked this piece of information away in the back of his head.

"Anyway, when we saw you with Glinda I presumed you'd fulfilled the prophecy and saved her from her wickedness. Evanora pulled out a music box like the one you gave me and implied that you'd...well that you'd put the moves on her. I didn't take that too well and I went to Evanora and asked her to take the pain away. She gave me this apple and said that one bite and it would wither my heart so I would be impenetrable. It seemed like a good idea at the time. And you know the rest. I turned green, led an army against you, tried to kill Glinda and you stopped me."

"So you _are_ Theodora then? Did she get transferred into the apple?"

"I am not Theodora. Not exactly. She was- was...Oh this is confusing! It made sense when I figured it out but now I wonder if perhaps I was just deluding myself." The face in the green apple skin bit her lip and frowned, doubting herself .So like when he'd first met her and the wizard hoped she was right.

"So you aren't Theodora?"

"Well not exactly. I'm just a part of her. The good part. Theodora, the one you met on your first day in Oz, she loves and hates in equal measure and it was always the balance between the two that made her complete. When you broke her heart, _my_ heart, she went over the rails, the balance tipped to the other side. Evanora's enchanted apple was meant to wither my heart or at least that's what Evanora said but it didn't do that, or I wouldn't have felt anything. You can't love without a heart but you can't hate without it either and in the form of the Wicked witch of the West you have pure hatred. She has a heart it's just really twisted."

"I don't understand..."

"Look even Evanora was a good witch once but she had always been distant, cold. When she bit into the apple she turned even more distant to the point where she felt nothing at all. It brings out the worst in everyone you see, it doesn't just wither their heart. If that was all it did then a person would just become unattached and stop caring about the world, they would have no ambition, no cares, no emotion and yet Evanora was greedy. Her heart was not withered, she just told herself that it was."

"So it doesn't corrupt, it just brings out the darker nature?" Oscar asked and Theodora smiled, happy that he finally understood.

"Yes."

"So if Glinda took a bite she wouldn't be affected?" He inquired slowly.

To which Theodora smiled but it was the smile of a parent just about to break their child's happy bubble.

"She would be affected. Everyone has a darker nature Oz, some latent trait that is tainted. I suspect that if Glinda ever ate the apple she would be overzealous about keeping the Ozians safe. Yes she'd probably instil curfews that prevented citizens of Oz from doing anything, have them conform to a specific idea of what she believes is right. Put them in a gilded cage all in the name of keeping them safe."

"And if I bit the apple?"

"Your vanity would be unsurpassed Wizard. In the search for immortality and a desire to be the greatest ever you would probably destroy everything. When you're the last one left it is easy to be great." Her words shook Oscar, he could see it happen in his mind. It would be easy. He would just lie to the good people of Oz and lead them to their doom, his biggest con yet without ever having to even stir from behind his curtain. Yes it would be very easy indeed. Inside the apple Theodora sighed as if sensing his thoughts. "You have to understand Oz it is not the absence of darkness that makes us good, it is whether we fight against it. Just like how bravery is only meaningful because of the presence of fear."

"You sound different. Older."

"I've had a long time to think about things while trying to work out how to contact you."

"You think I can really save you?"

"I don't know for sure but I hope. I believe and isn't that what matters?" He grinned then and she grinned back. Theodora always believed in him. More than anyone else ever had, even Glinda didn't believe in him as much as Theodora had. And he had broken that trust she had in him.

"I promise you this Theodora, if there is a way to bring you back the way you were I will spend the rest of my life trying to make it true."

"Oh Oz, you can't promise me that. Even if you wanted to I won't ever be the same girl I was when we first met. With that one bite I didn't just split myself into two, I also ate away one good part of me, my innocence. I can never be the same again." She said sadly.

His eyes softened and he leaned back against the chaise heavily. It was the worst timing ever but he was only human and frankly a weak one. Currently his arm was getting very tired of holding up the apple at eye level and he shifted forward putting the bright green fruit onto the table and leant against the marble surface shaking out his wrist which earned him a look from Theodora.

"You know what bugs me the most about all this?"

"What?" She asked, all wide eyed and sweet.

"This is all because of fruit. _Fruit_. Between Snow White and Eve and what not I should be used to it but really, all this fuss because of one apple?" He shook his head.

"Who's this Snow White?" She asked playfully. "Another one of your music box girls?"

There was no jealousy in her voice and the surprise must have shown o his face.

"All the darkness is in the other Theodora remember. I'm all the good, there's no jealousy here. Plus being an apple really puts things into perspective."

"Well Snow White was a princess. She had a wicked stepmother who wanted to be the fairest in the kingdom but Snow White was ever so pure and beautiful she soon surpassed her stepmother. Her stepmother ordered a huntsman to take her deep into the woods and kill her but he couldn't do it. Snow White escapes into the woods only to take up residence with seven dwarves in a little cottage deep in the mountains. Soon the queen realises that the huntsman had lied and decides to take things into her own hands. She dresses up as an old lady and gives Snow White a poisoned apple and Snow White falls into a deep sleep only to be rescued from her death like slumber by True Love's Kiss. And they lived happily ever after."

"She found her true love when she was asleep? She's got moves."Oscar snorted in laughter.

"Yes well she didn't exactly find him. He found her. Some prince was wandering by and saw her in her glass coffin and fell in love at first sight."

"Well maybe that's it then. Maybe I just need my true love's kiss and I'll be back to myself in no time." She joked but he considered the idea and thought it had merit.

"It could work, right?"

"Oscar I highly doubt someone kissing the Wicked Witch, as my body has become is a good idea. Considering all the anger in her she'd probably lash out besides which, who would ever _truly_ love the Wicked Witch of the West? And the other half of me that's in this apple can't be kissed either. Someone tastes one little bit of this apple and they'll find themselves drowning in their own darkness."

"I guess..."

A gust of wind interrupted their conversation and the two turned to the balcony doors that had been closed just a second before. The black and gold curtains fluttered softly and they turned their attention back to one another.

"It's probably nothing." Oscar said shrugging with conviction that he did not quite feel.

"Oz?" He looked up to find Glinda staring between him and the apple with concern. "Theodora?"

"Hello Sister." Theodora said and Glinda's eyes rolled back into her head and she dropped to the floor in a fall that had Oscar wincing before he realised what Theodora had said and turned to her in shock.

"She's your sister?!"


End file.
